


Two Halves of a Whole Idiot

by littleconnections



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Blow Jobs, Coming Out, Friends to Lovers, Hand Jobs, Hockey Big Bang 2019, Internalized Biphobia, M/M, self discovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-19
Updated: 2019-10-19
Packaged: 2020-12-24 10:29:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21097994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littleconnections/pseuds/littleconnections
Summary: There’s a progression to making a new friend.You don’t know them. You meet them. You become friends, best friends, the best friend you’ve ever had. You want to put your mouth on their skin, your hands in their hair. Their smile turns your insides out. It’s normal. Chill.Travis has never had a friend like Nolan before.





	Two Halves of a Whole Idiot

**Author's Note:**

> First of all, thank you elenajames for creating a wonderful [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0JFP3q1owy93fYJ3jJIm37?si=vU6uir_FSrq5OZLJqRmHPQ) and some [art](https://iaintafraidofnoghostbear.tumblr.com/post/188432994487/two-halves-of-a-whole-idiot-by-littleconnections) to go with this fic!
> 
> Thank you eafay for betaing! 
> 
> Thank you Suzanne, for always being my biggest fan.
> 
> Thank you YCDT! Discord Flyers Channel for unknowingly providing a lot of material for this fic.

Travis meets Nolan the summer Nolan gets drafted. Second overall. Travis had kept half an eye on the draft since he still knew a couple of guys going this year and besides, it’s not every year that your team drafts second overall. He doesn’t know Nolan personally, but he’s pretty sure he knows someone who knows him. It’s always like that in hockey, you know a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy, even if the guy in question is from Russia or Europe or something. 

Anyway, the point is: Nolan gets drafted and Travis doesn’t know him. Watches a couple of things from his juniors play, is vaguely impressed and then forgets about it for the rest of the summer. He has his own things going on. 

He remembers at training camp though, when he spots Patrick with Provy and Ghost and a few others, crowded together at someone’s stall. He’s not saying anything, just grinning as he listens and Travis ambles over and introduces himself. They do the whole backslap-bro-hug thing and Travis can’t help but make a note of how tall Patrick is. A good six inches taller than Travis himself and yeah, almost everyone on the roster is taller than he is but he feels especially petty about it when it’s rookies who just got drafted. 

Other than that, Travis notes that Patrick is already pink in the cheeks, his hair still cut neat and short like it had been in the draft and his eyes are a pale shade of blue, lips quirking as he smiles down at Travis. 

They don’t talk much, at least not one on one because it’s training camp and some people (Travis) need to focus. It’s hard work and at the end of it, Patrick is still on the roster. They all go out and celebrate and Travis wanders over to where he’s tucked into one of the booths. 

He has a beer in front of him that he’s not legal for in Philadelphia, but Travis has a beer in his hand that he’s also not legal for, so it’s not like he’s gonna say anything or whatever. 

Patty smiles when Travis slides in next to him but doesn’t say anything, just slouches into his seat and takes a swing from his bottle, so Travis starts bothering Provy instead. Provy is used to him, mostly lets him run his mouth and snipes back. Patty’s shoulder nudges into Travis’s occasionally and he laughs once, a low chuckle that seems like it’s being pulled out of him, unwilling. Travis is delighted. 

“See,” he says to Claude who joined them at some point. “Patty thinks I’m funny.”

“He just doesn’t know any better yet,” Claude says and then to Patty: “Don’t worry, you’ll find out soon who the actually funny people on the team are.”

That makes Patty grin but he doesn’t laugh, not like he had at Travis, so Travis still maintains his sense of victory and when he nudges his shoulder into Patty’s he gets nudged right back. 

\--

So, Patty’s pretty cool. He fits in with the team, skates hard and well. He’s not very loud, not shy or anything, just settled into himself, reserved. He seems like an island sometimes, quiet and still in a locker room full of yelling assholes. 

Not that Patty isn’t an asshole. He doesn’t chirp a lot but that when he does it’s scathing. Also, he’s not scared of  _ any _ one.

“Well maybe you’d score more if you actually managed to receive a pass,” he says to Simmer when they’re trudging back into the locker room after practice. 

“Are you saying you’re a bad passer?” Simmer asks.

“I’m saying you have, like, butterfingers,” Nolan says. “Everything just slips through.”

It gets a chortle from around the room. Simmer slugs Nolan on the arm and heads for his stall to strip. There’s a grin on Nolan’s face, a small, private one, as he goes to his own stall and starts yanking off his gear. Travis only notices because he’s still watching. 

\--

Unfortunately, the start of the season is pretty fucking shitty. Travis doesn’t know why; he just can’t seem to make things click for him. He’ll be out there on the ice, working, working, trying to put it together and nothing will happen. It’s frustrating as shit.

Luckily or unluckily Patty seems to be in the same boat. Nothing he’s doing is working and it’s 8 games in and they’re both hovering around 3 points. 

It fucking sucks. What doesn’t suck is Provy. Provy is having himself a hell of start of a season. It’s a joy to watch and Travis isn’t— he’s not jealous or whatever, would never not want Provy to have the amazing time he’s having. It’s just. It’s just harder to be happy when you’re having a hard time, overall.

It makes it so fucking  _ natural _ when he starts spending more time with Patty. 

Patty is— he isn’t like Travis. 

Maybe that’s part of the appeal. Travis talks and talks at Nolan and Nolan, for the most part, just absorbs it with a twist of a smile and the occasional sarcastic comment. He sits on Travis’s couch and watches stupid movies with him that they can quote back and forth to each other, but then he disappears into himself, his phone, seemingly blending out everything Travis is doing. 

It drives Travis crazy. It’s like…like a code he wants to crack or something. Figure out which things will make Patty smile at him, laugh sometimes, get him talking and which will make him retreat. It’s—Travis likes putting in the work when it’s interesting. When the reward is worth it. 

They sit together on the couch in Travis’s apartment after a shitty afternoon game where neither of them had any points when Patty says:

“I don’t know if I’m doing this right.”

He’s quiet when he says it. Carefully monotone. When Travis looks at him there’s a tightness around his eyes that Travis hasn’t seen before. 

“Hockey?” Travis asks. 

Nolan kind of—shrugs. 

“I dunno. Everything man, it’s like…like…I thought it would be easier.”

“It’s hard for everyone.”

“Duh.” Nolan rolls his eyes. “I didn’t think it’d be  _ easy _ . Just. Not like this.”

“Yeah, well.” Travis is picking at the label of his beer. “You’re not the only one.”

“You had almost fifty points last year.”

There’s a small part of Travis that gets really happy that Nolan knows that. 

“Yeah and right now jack shit is working for me, so.” 

Patty is settled into his corner of the couch, the one he always sits in when he comes over. He’s sprawled out, legs spread wide, one socked foot propped up on the coffee table. It’s comfortable, and it’s comfortable, too, when he leans over and lets himself fall over the couch and into Travis, ending up half in his lap. 

“Shut up man, you did it before, you’ll do it again.”

“Yeah well.” Travis puts a hand in Nolan’s hair because it’s right there. “You’ll figure out, number-two-overall. It’s only October, who’s scoring in October, eh?”

\--

It’s mostly easy between the two of them and soon enough they end up mostly banning hockey talk, except for the occasional sulking session. They talk about other shit. Hunting, mostly. Fishing. Nolan has this weird obsession with spearfishing and spends almost half a day telling Travis about it in detail. 

“Come visit in the summer,” he says. “I’ll show you. It’s the fucking best.”

“Deal,” Travis says, mostly so he can nail Patty down for a summer visit. He’s still skeptical about the spearfishing. 

There are other days too though. Days when Travis can’t sit still. His fingers are tapping on the armrest of the couch, his foot jiggling. He tries to pay attention to the movie they’re watching, but it’s boring, he’s seen this before or something just like it. It’s like his brain is sliding in and out of focus until suddenly Patty is right there, wrapping a hand around his wrist.

“You need to stop.”

TK swallows. Nolan’s hand is big and warm and dry, curled loosely around his wrist, each finger a delicate point of pressure.

“No.”

Nolan is looking at him, eyes half closed, soft blue and piercing.

“I’ll sit on you if you don’t.”

Travis gives a strangled half-laugh. He wants to pull his hand out of Patty’s grip but somehow can’t, even though he’s not even holding him tightly. Instead he starts jiggling his leg again.

“That’s it,” Patty growls and yanks at his arm. There’s a struggle because Travis isn’t in the business of letting people sit on him but Patty is a big motherfucker, and Travis may be scrappy but sometimes reach wins. He ends up on his back, Nolan on top of him, his arms pinned. He wiggles and bucks a little but Nolan just makes himself heavier, pins him down with his whole weight and then apparently settles in to watch the movie.

Travis’s heart is beating really fast.

“I can’t move.”

“Good.”

Nolan is apparently not going to move. His head is resting on Travis’s chest, chin digging in a little as he props himself up to look at the TV. He’s a long fucker, pinning almost all of Travis beneath him. He can maybe get one leg free, but what the hell is he gonna do with that? Kick ineffectually, maybe. So Travis kind of…gives up. Accepts his situation. Nolan’s weight is heavy and warm on top of him, shifting slightly with his regular breathing, the occasional rumble of his laughter. It’s – soothing, maybe. Travis still can’t focus on the movie, even if he wanted to get a crick in his neck, so he just lays there and thinks. 

It’s boring mostly. His mind doesn’t go blank or anything, he thinks about some of the turnovers he had in the last game, tries to work out what he did wrong. Thinks about what he’s going to get his parents for Christmas. That’s still a way off but it helps to be prepared. 

Somehow the sensation of being trapped doesn’t feel claustrophobic. Travis just sinks into it, into his thoughts, warm and forced to be still. He’s aware of Patty, the bigness of him, the way they’re pressed together, but it doesn’t seem that important. His breathing is slow. 

Finally the movie is done. Travis doesn’t even notice until Patty rolls off him and sits up. 

“Huh?” he says, like an idiot. 

“Movie’s over.”

“Oh.”

They stare at each other. Nolan’s expression is sort of flat but his one eyebrow is crooked and there’s a smile hovering at the corner of his mouth. Travis wants to keep looking at him but then he makes the mistake of trying to move his arms. They immediately seize up in pain. 

“Mother _ fucker _ !”

“…oops?” Nolan says but he’s also laughing. 

“Fuck you!  _ Fuck _ you!” Travis kicks at him. Nolan doesn’t even try to fight back, just keeps laughing. He laughs all the way into Travis’s kitchen, Travis hobbling along so he can keep swearing at him, and then steals a Gatorade from Travis’s fridge. 

“I hate you.” Travis says. 

Nolan shrugs. “But I got you to be still.”

Which is – not the point, even if Travis’s brain feels better now. Like he can focus on something again. 

“Whatever,” Travis says. “Pass me a drink.”

Nolan tosses him a blue Gatorade. It’s a struggle to get the top off with his fingers still aching but eventually Travis manages and pours it into his mouth. Nolan watches him. 

“CoD?” he asks when Travis is done. 

“Sure.”

Travis tosses the bottle somewhere in the vague direction of his recycling and together they make their way back to the living room, settling in next to each other on the couch, just close enough that their shoulders brush occasionally. 

\--

Then the thing against the fucking Ducks happens. Of course it’s against the fucking Ducks, who are a stupid team anyway. Named after a Disney movie, who the fuck does that? And not even the best water bird out there. At least geese fuck shit up. Ducks just suck. 

It’s just at the beginning of the second period and everything is still looking okay. Not good, it’s tied 1-1, but okay and  –  then that fucking asshole hits Patty and Patty’s head hits the boards. 

Travis almost doesn’t notice because he’s focused on the puck, but then the play is blown dead and everything zooms in on Nolan. He’s slow to get up, sort of bent over and everything in Travis’s chest pulls itself together. He watches as the trainers come over, heard Nolan down the tunnel and he’s still looking, when Ghost swears beside him. 

“Mother _ fuckers _ . Shit.”

Travis can’t breathe but he pulls himself away, turns back to the game. That’s gotta be his focus right now. 

It turns into a shitshow and not in their favor. The period is full of people being sent to the box and Anaheim gets one goal after the other. Coots manages to put one in in the third but it’s nowhere close to enough and when they get back to the locker room they get told that Nolan’s gone home. Concussion.

Travis wants to go out and find the Duck that did it, hit him over the head, but that’s not the way the game is played and besides he’s not even one hundred percent sure who it was. Instead he’s just left with a ball of rage and worry gnawing inside his chest. It’s—it hadn’t looked that bad. But if they took Patty out of the game then it was bad. Obviously it was bad if he was fucking concussed. 

There’s nothing Travis can do, not even text Nolan because he’s probably not looking at screens right now, so he goes to bed. It doesn’t feel good but what else is there to do. He’ll check on Nolan in the morning. 

\--

Travis doesn’t bother texting Nolan before he drives over the next morning. Nolan probably still isn’t allowed to look at screens and anyway, Travis doesn’t know if he could stay away if Nolan said he didn’t want to see anyone right now. Better to just show up and bully him into eating the muffin Travis just picked up. 

Nolan looks surly when he opens the door. Behind him the apartment is mostly dark, so Travis was probably right about the avoiding screens thing. 

“I don’t want to see anyone,” Nolan says but he’s already stepping back from the door to let Travis in. 

“Too fuckin’ bad, bud,” he says as he barges in and kicks off his shoes. “Better eat this bitchin’ muffin.”

Nolan trails Travis as he marches into the living room and sits down on the couch. Nolan’s couch isn’t nearly as comfy as Travis’s. There’s a pile of blankets where Nolan had apparently made some sort of nest for himself. He sits on them now, legs up on the couch. Travis can see his ankle where his worn-out sweatpants are riding up. That shouldn’t feel important. 

Nolan picks at the muffin, peeling the paper off the side digging into the dough to pick out a blueberry. Travis watches him. His shirt is stretched and worn soft, lettering so faded Travis can’t really make it out. Comfort clothing. 

“You okay?”

“…whatever. It’s just a concussion. It happens.”

It doesn’t fucking sound okay. Nolan’s face is shuttered. He finally takes a bite of his muffin, chews slowly. 

“Yeah.” Travis says. “Just a stupid concussion. You’ll be back on the ice in no time.”

He scoots closer and sort of…leans into Patty. It’s not a hug or a cuddle, just body contact. Nolan doesn’t relax but he also doesn’t move away, just eats his muffin, bit by bit, while letting Travis lean on him. 

\--

Turns out Nolan isn’t back on the ice in no time. Or, he’s back on the ice but he’s not back with the team, not back in the game. One game becomes two, becomes three, becomes four and Patty gets surlier and surlier. 

There’s no timeline for these things. Travis knows and Patty knows and the trainers keep telling him but it’s frustrating as shit to be so close and not be able to join in. Travis tries to keep Nolan’s spirits up. He visits him and they talk shit and get food and Travis is only about six percent more annoying than usual because he doesn’t know how else he can help. 

“What if I’m not back against Winnipeg?” Nolan asks once. It’s quiet, almost like he doesn’t want to. 

“You’ll be back,” Travis says. He doesn’t know that but he has to believe it because Nolan not getting to play in his hometown for the first time because of the stupid Ducks is too fucking depressing to think about. 

In the end, Patty is back and it’s amazing. Okay, they lose and it’s the third loss in a row but it’s a tight game and having Patty with them, back on the ice and back with the team makes up for everything. Travis spends the whole game grinning so hard his cheeks hurt by the end of it.

\--

Of course, that loss is only the third loss in a long fucking string of losses.

Travis is tired. Not like hockey tired but in-his-soul tired. It’s been almost a month since they’ve won a game and by now there’s a sort of morbid fascination building up to see how deep this streak can go. 

It’s not great in the room. There’s a tension there and even if things are surface level okay everyone is a little…snappish. Travis has probably been least affected, which he knows grates on people. It’s not like he doesn’t care. He cares a lot, in fact. He just doesn’t really see the point in dwelling on it, tries not to get into his own head about it. 

Then they lose the tenth one against Boston in front of a booing home crowd and they don’t even manage to get a single goal. 

Travis’s not gonna lie: that one hurts. 

G calls for a closed door meeting after that. No trainers, no staff, just the players sitting at their stalls, mostly still sweating into their equipment. Beside Travis Patty is hunched over at his stall. It looks like he’s trying to curl his big frame into himself and, granted, Patty didn’t have a good game, but then none of them did, so Travis nudges him until he looks up and then makes faces until he smiles, at least a little. 

“Alright,” G is saying. “This can’t keep going like this. We’re going on a road trip in two days and we can’t come back from that without a win.”

There’s a general wince around the room. G’s standing in the middle, still geared up except for his helmet. He’s sweaty and determined. Very captainly as he glares at them all. 

“Tomorrow, everybody comes to my house. Not optional. Everyone be there. No partners or kids. We have to fix this, boys.”

There’s a rumble of agreement and then, when it becomes clear Claude isn’t going to say anything else right now, a general shuffle of movement as everyone starts getting out of their stuff and the doors are opened again. Nolan doesn’t move, so Travis keeps sitting at his stall a little while longer, too. Patty gets in his own head. You have to look out for him. 

\--

The next day is an off-day. The day after that they’re going on their western Canada road trip, fucking Calgary-Edmonton-Vancouver, and Claude is absolutely right: if they come back from this road trip without any points it’s going to be worse than hell. 

Travis mostly sleeps in and then fucks around on his Xbox before he drives over to Claude’s. 

There are already a bunch of people there. Claude shoves a beer at Travis and shoos him in the direction of the living room, where he settles in next to Provy. 

“Where’s Ryanne?”

Provy snorts. “You think she wants to be around for this?”

Which: fair point. The living room is filled with various teammates in different states of grumpiness. Almost everyone is clutching a beer. There are snacks. 

Eventually everyone is there. Patty is across the room and to the left of Travis, tucked into an armchair, chin resting on his knee. Travis catches his eye and smiles at him and after a moment Patty smiles back. 

“Alright,” Claude is standing in the middle of the room again. “We all know what’s going on. We fucking suck right now, and not gonna lie, the mood hasn’t been great. There’s some tension here. And I know we’re better than this. Beating each other ourselves up over it isn’t gonna get us out of it. So that’s what tonight is about. Get it all out in the open. Feeling words, not judging words.”

Someone snorts.

“Shut the fuck up, I took a class,” G snaps.

So they talk and they drink. It gets easier after the first round of beers has been put away. Everyone gets to say some stuff: some about the coaching staff, some about the other guys on the team. Travis gets to hear that people get frustrated by him, feel like he’s not taking things seriously enough. Which. He knows. He’s been told. He takes things plenty seriously, he thinks. Just because he doesn’t sit around with a grim expression-

Claude stops him. 

“You don’t have to defend yourself,” he says. “Everyone gets to say their pieces, yeah? It’s not about who is doing what wrong, it’s about telling each other how we feel.”

“Doesn’t feel great,” Travis says. Claude nods. 

“I don’t think you don’t take things seriously,” Nolan says from his chair. He’s uncurled and he’s lounging now, big body spread out to take up space. “You take me seriously. And you’ve made me feel really, like, welcome.”

He blinks slowly. Travis swallows and looks at him. There’s a vulnerability there, uncertainty in every one of Nolan’s delicate, angular features. 

“Thanks,” he says and when he finally looks away Claude is looking at him, head cocked a little like a curious cat. Travis makes a  _ what _ face at him but he just shakes his head and goes back to moderating the team discussion. 

It goes on for a while, gets a little teary for Travis’s taste after a couple more rounds of beer have been drunk. Simmer gets deep telling G what a great captain he is and how much he admires him, how much he cares for his team and what that means and there’s a resounding chorus of agreement. 

Almost no one goes home that night, except those guys that get their wives to pick them up. Ryanne doesn’t show up until the next morning, with large amounts of coffee and baked goods because she’s basically an angel, and then everyone has to hustle in order to make it to the plane on time. 

Everyone is a little bleary on the plane but the mood is definitely lighter. They’re still in the same position they were in before the evening but there’s no lingering, unspoken resentment and as the day goes on and everyone recovers everything seems lighter, looser. 

It translates on the ice. No one panics when the Flames score their first goal late in the second and then a minute later they tie it up. Then in the second they get three, just one after another and a fifth in the third. The one measly goal Calgary manages barely even registers. 

In the locker room everyone loses their minds. 

“Fuuuuuck yeeeah, G!” 

“You the fuckin man!”

Claude is grinning at all of them like he fucking personally orchestrated this win and Travis is so happy he wants to hug every single guy here. Nolan is right beside him so he starts with him. 

“Get off, you weirdo,” Nolan laughs but doesn’t actually dislodge Travis’s grip. One long arm wraps around Travis’s sweaty shoulders and they sort of scream-bounce to the terrible song Coots has turned up. 

It’s like something that was stuck has come undone and they just keep winning and winning. First in Calgary and then in Edmonton and then, when they fly into Vancouver Travis and Nolan get pulled aside and told that they’re going to be rooming together now. That has nothing to do with the streak but it still feels good, right. 

Travis punches Nolan in the arm when they walk out of the meeting. 

“This is going to be fucking awesome.”

\--

Travis and Nolan get told they’re going to room together towards the end of the trip. It’s pretty fucking great. They already hang out all the time at home and now isn’t any different. Nolan lets Travis talk as much as he wants, watching him with an indulgent smile and only telling him to shut the fuck up about twenty percent of the time. They play video games together and chill and Travis finds out all sorts of things about Nolan that he hadn’t known yet. 

Like right now he’s sitting on the bed, watching him struggle to tie his tie. 

“You can’t tie your tie?” Travis can feel the grin stretching his face. “What are you, new? Did your mom always do it for you?”

“Oh, shut the fuck up,” Nolan bites out as he undoes the knot yet again. 

“How long does it usually take you?” Travis asks. “An hour? Two? Do you have to start getting ready extra early?”

“Fuck off, Teeks.” Nolan is looking disgruntled now, face accentuated by the slicked-back mess of his hair. He looks like a wet cat. Travis wants to put his hands on it. 

He rolls off the bed and steps towards him. “Come on, give it here.”

“What?”

“Give it here, I’ll tie it for you.” Travis holds out his hand and after a moment’s hesitation Nolan pulls it off and hands it to Travis. Their fingers brush, he notes absently, then loops the tie around his own neck and does up the knot with quick fingers. 

Nolan fidgets as he watches and there’s a tightness in Travis’s stomach but he doesn’t fumble and then he’s done. He loosens the tie enough to take it off, stepping forward and looping it up over Nolan’s head. 

“There you go,” he grins up at him. “Loser.”

They’re standing really close together and Nolan is looking down at him. He smiles, wide-mouthed and soft. There’s a dimple on his left cheek and Travis feels strange all of a sudden, like his heart is beating double time. He swallows against the tightness in his throat and steps back. 

“Don’t say I never do anything for you,” he says. 

“Thanks, TK,” Nolan says, blinking slowly. He’s still smiling. 

\--

Of course, the win streak doesn’t last. They’re a hockey team; they win some and they lose some. The first loss isn’t so terrible and then they win against the Red Wings. But then, the night against the Sabres, they lose 2-4. It’s terrible, every single one of them is terrible and the mood in the locker room is this tight, angry, miserable thing. No one is talking and Travis is so mad his hands are shaking as he strips each part of his gear off. He played like shit. He played like shit and then the score was 2-4 and now. Now they’re here.

Across the room Jakub hurls his helmet into his stall. Everyone looks at him, but his face is all rage, tension lines around his nose. No one says anything as he hurls his gloves after the helmet, then strips the rest of his underclothes off and stalks into the shower. 

Travis’s gaze flicks over to Nolan. He’s turned around, back to the locker room. His shoulders are pulled up, all tension. Travis looks for a moment at the long, naked lines of his back and the tips of his sweat drenched hair that just brush his shoulders, then turns back to finish undressing. There’s a roiling pit in his stomach, like somehow seeing Nolan upset is distracting him from his own anger but by making him feel bad. He doesn’t understand it. 

Everyone heads straight to their rooms when they get to the hotel. Nolan doesn’t say anything when he opens the door for them, just stalks into the room and straight to the bathroom. Travis turns on the TV for background noise, then changes into his pajamas. He watches a bit of the movie that’s on, sitting on the edge of the bed. He doesn’t know it and it doesn’t seem particularly interesting, two women chatting over food. 

Nolan comes out of the bathroom and doesn’t say anything, just leaves the door open for Travis. He’s tempted to reach out when he slips past him, just a touch of reassurance, but then doesn’t. He brushes his teeth looking at himself in the mirror, exhausted and miserable, then goes back into the room. 

Nolan is already in bed, curled up on his side, back facing the room. The lights are off on his side of the room and the TV is too. Travis pauses for a moment, looking at him. He’s not asleep yet: there’s too much tension in his back, tight and miserable and besides Travis knows that Nolan sleeps on his back like a weirdo. He’s still managing to radiate misery, curled in on himself under the hotel sheets and yeah, Travis had some bad plays in that game but Nolan was on the ice for 2 of the 3 goals against. 

For a moment Travis is tempted to go over to Nolan, nudge him over and climb into the bed behind him and…what? Hug him? Comfort him? It’s a weirdass thing to want but Travis does, wants to do something, anything really to have Nolan stop being so fucking miserable. If that means spooning him, wrapping his arms around him and tucking his face between his shoulders, then so be it.

He doesn’t, though. There’s no way Nolan would welcome it and there’s no precedent for it or anything. So Travis just stays quiet, turns off the lights and climbs into his own bed. He doesn’t feel good, feels the misery of the loss and in the dark, even though Nolan’s breathing is inaudible, Travis still thinks he can feel the unhappiness roll of him. It’s fucked and there’s nothing he can do. They just have to be better next time. 

Cold comfort. It takes Travis a long time to fall asleep. 

\--

By the time they get to the middle of January, they’re on a three game win streak and they have a five day break before they have to go to New Jersey to play the Devils. Nolan is excited about the game. It takes Travis a little while to realize that, since Nolan excited is still pretty low key. It takes him even longer to figure out it’s because of Hischier. 

“So, you’re like, good friends?” Travis asks, chewing on his burger. It’s probably gross, considering the way Nolan is staring at his mouth. 

“Yeah, he’s cool,” Nolan says.

“No draft rivalry?”

Nolan shrugs and shoves a fry into his mouth. “Nah. It’s not like we knew each other or anything and then we met and it was like...I dunno. It was chill.”

Travis makes a skeptical noise but his mouth is still full of burger so he can’t say anything for a couple of minutes, chewing and swallowing. Nolan doesn’t say anything either. He eats his fries, one after another until Travis manages to finish the rest of the burger. 

“Okay it was chill but you’re like…hyped.”

Nolan rolls his eyes. “It’s just gonna be fun to see him again. Play against him. Whatever.”

“Hmm.”

Nolan kicks Travis’s foot and when Travis looks up at him his lips quirk in a smile.

\--

The game starts as a shitshow, despite the Devils being on a five game  _ losing _ streak. Hischier gets an assist on the goal, not even halfway through the first period. The even it up before the period ends, so Travis isn’t bothered by it. 

Travis does keep a little bit of an eye out for Hischier and maybe a little bit extra of an eye when Patty and Hischier are on the ice at the same time. He’s curious. He’s never seen Patty interact with people he legitimately likes before, not like teammates who he mostly likes due to enforced proximity and which he covers up by being kind of a dick. 

There isn’t much to go on as they head into the second and Patty gets two high sticking penalties, one after the other. Jersey scores on that first power play but it’s fine because the Flyers get two more after that and Hischier wasn’t involved, even a little bit. 

Travis gets a goal of his own in the beginning of the third and that’s it for the Devils. They manage one pathetic comeback goal in the last minute but that’s it, then it’s over and Travis skates to the tunnel feeling nothing short of triumphant. 

The mood in the locker room is good, upbeat. Travis wiggle-dances out of his jersey, tossing it to the side as he bounces along. Nolan has already disappeared into the shower and by the time Travis gets out of his shower he’s already shoving his feet into his slides and disappearing out the door. 

Because he has his meet up with Hischier. Right. Travis wonders how that’s going to go, after they trashed the Devils so thoroughly but then decides not to think about it. They won. He’s having a good time. 

He hangs with Provy when they get back to the hotel, because no way is he sitting in his room waiting for Nolan to get back. He has shit to say and he needs someone to say it to. Granted, he doesn’t exactly know what shit yet, but Provy will provide a willing ear. 

“I don’t know how Patty lives, rooming with you always,” Provy complains after Travis talks through the third episode of How I Met Your Mother. Whatever, it’s a rerun.

“That bitch loves me.”

Provy laughs at that but he does make Travis leave after one more episode. It’s stupid. Patty isn’t even back yet, so Travis settles into bed, scrolling through Instagram and bothering Crouser. Eventually his eyes are drooping and he’s just about ready to just give up and go to sleep, when the door opens and Patty shuffles in. 

He doesn’t say anything to Travis, just grunts in recognition and disappears into the bathroom. Travis plugs his phone in and lays it on the nightstand. He spends a minute thinking about how close to curfew it is, then another minute wondering what the hell Nolan could have been doing for so long. He pushes the thought away, settles into his blankets. The lights are mostly off, except the one on his nightstand but he keeps it on until Nolan reappears from the bathroom and settles into his own bed. 

“Night, Patty,” he says. 

“Night, Teeks,” comes the mumbled response. 

\--

Travis sleeps like shit. First he can’t fall asleep properly, drifting in and out of almost-sleep, then he dreams something so stupid he actually wakes up from it. It’s not a nightmare or anything but he does wake up super irritated. He doesn’t remember that actual dream, except maybe he’d been fighting someone, naked and completely unbothered by it? 

The lights at the front of the room are on already and Travis can hear the shower, so Nolan is already up. Travis sits up in his bed and grabs his phone. There’s more than a few messages from the team group chat, so Travis opens it up, scrolling to find the source of amusement. 

The result truly is a gift to him. 

Apparently someone had gotten a picture of Hischier and Patty talking after the game yesterday and posted it to twitter. Jake posted the link to the chat and when Travis opens it up he is so, so grateful. 

Every inch of Patty’s skin is covered. They’re both wearing knee socks pulled all the way up and slides. Hischier has a stupid hat perched stupidly on his head. Patty’s whole expression is dumb as hell, backward hat jammed over his wet hair. 

They’re both side-eyeing whoever is taking the picture so hard that Travis honest to god starts laughing out loud.

“Patty!” He yells. The shower has stopped by now. “Hey, Patty! Enjoy your time with Hischier yesterday?”

“What?” Nolan pokes his head out of the bathroom door, hair wet and dripping. He has a toothbrush in his mouth. 

Travis thrusts the phone at him, still cackling.

“Enjoy your paparazzi moment?”

“Oh fuck off.”

Nolan comes out of the bathroom. He has a towel wrapped around his waist, little rivulets of water still dripping down his chest. There’s a weird pulling in Travis’s stomach.

“I didn’t even want them to take that,” Nolan mumbles around his toothbrush.

“Yeah, cause you look like a tool.”

Patty looks like he’s considering taking his toothbrush and stabbing Travis with it, which would honestly be worth it. This picture is worth everything. 

“I mean really,” Travis says, “is this Hischier’s idea of a hot date? Meeting up in the basement?”

Nolan turns around and marches back into the bathroom, closing the door behind him. Travis can tell he’s trying to be dignified but the back of his neck is already turning red.

“Did you have a good time?” Travis yells at the door. “Hanging out in the basement? Is that all you need?” 

There’s no response from the bathroom. 

“At least I buy you food!”

Travis saves the picture to his phone with satisfaction.

\--

Travis turns twenty-one in March. It’s a big deal in the States and Travis isn’t American but he’s also not going to turn down an opportunity for a bunch of people to buy him drinks. Things even fall together in so that he manages to get most of the team and some friends to a club the Saturday after. 

The whole thing starts off with a round of shots from the captain. Tequila, which sets the tone for the night, Travis licking the salt off his wrist and yelling in a group of guys, everyone eager to pat him on the back and buy him more drinks. 

It’s a good club, with upbeat music on the dancefloor, though by the time Travis ends up there he’s killed off more than one beer with his guys (the good stuff too) and he’s well on his way to being drunk. The music is incessantly loud, but it has a good beat and he makes eye contact with a girl who smiles sweet enough that makes his way over to her.

She’s really hot, with long dark hair and big eyes and she laughs when he leans over to yell at her. 

“I’m Travis. It’s my birthday!”

“Yeah?” She yells back. “Well, then, happy birthday.” Then she leans in and kisses him, right on the mouth. He didn’t expect it and she laughs again when she pulls back and sees his face. 

“Come find me later, buy me a drink,” she says, pats his cheek and disappears into the crowd. It takes him a second to react and try to follow her, but by the time he’s battled his way through all the people she’s nowhere to be seen. He does spot Patty though, standing a little way off and holding a beer, so he makes his way over to him instead. 

“Patty!” He yells, super pleased. 

Patty grins down at him, the one that only tugs at one corner of his mouth. 

“You drunk, Teeks?” 

“No,” Travis says, then considers. He’s maybe drunker than he thought he was. “Maybe. We should do shots.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” He nods. “It’s my birthday. Also,” he leans in, serious, “a really hot girl just kissed me on the dancefloor.”

That makes Patty laugh, that low, gravely chuckle and Travis grins and nods and grabs him by the arm, steering him towards the bar. 

“Come on,” he yells. “Shots!”

The bartender hands him tequila shots and rolls his eyes when Travis informs him it’s his birthday, like maybe Travis already told him, but he’s smiling too.

Travis and Patty do the shots and then some other guys have caught up with them and Travis gets handed another beer, which he shotguns, and then a second one, which he drinks more slowly. It’s very crowded. They’re all standing very close together and Travis leans on Patty a little, for support. He could probably stand on his own, but Patty is right there and he’s very tall and…steady. Solid. The kind of thing you like to lean on, and he puts his arm around Travis’s shoulder, so he probably doesn’t mind. 

Travis drinks his beer, and then another beer and maybe another round of shots? Everything around him has gone kind of soupy and he’s really pleased with himself, standing here under Patty’s arm. Patty’s really great, not just for leaning on and stuff but also at hockey and also as a person. He’s from Canada, too, from Winnipeg and Travis always wanted to know—he turns to face him better and ask a questions something—something about Winnipeg, it seemed really important but Patty’s probably been drinking a lot too, or he’s just doing his usual mumbling thing because Travis can’t understand the answer at all. His voice is really deep. 

“Your voice is really deep,” he says, because Patty should know. “It’s nice.”

“Okay,” Claude says on Travis’s other side, “I think Teeks has probably had enough.”

“Where did you come from?” Travis asks.

“I came to check in with you,” Claude says. “Like a good fucking captain and I think it’s probably time to get you home, come on.”

Travis considers, then tries to squint at his watch. It’s late, like way later than he expected it to be and he thinks he can remember a couple of people saying bye to him already. 

“What about Patty?” he asks. He can’t just leave him here, it’s Travis’s birthday. That’d be a party foul. 

“I’ll call an Uber,” Patty says. “You’re drunker than I am.” He’s leaning in really close so Travis can understand him. 

“Everyone taken care of,” Claude reassures him. “Come on, let’s get your stuff.”

Patty has to let go of Travis and Travis has to walk on his own, which is definitely not a good idea because it makes him notice how unsteady everything around him is and he’s really glad when Claude catches him around the shoulders He’s not as good at it as Patty was, though, which Travis tells him because maybe it’s something he’ll want to work on. 

“Oh boy,” Claude says and eventually Travis is sitting in Claude’s truck. He even manages to get himself buckled in after a couple of tries. 

“So, good party, huh?” Claude asks as he starts driving. 

Travis hums. “Pretty good, yeah. This really hot girl kissed me.” He thinks. “Oh shit, I was supposed to buy her a drink but I never looked for her again. Patty distracted me.”

“Yeah?” Claude says. “Is he good at that? Distracting you?”

Travis shrugs. “He was just there, right? And he’s pretty great. Like, at hockey, but also in general? Have you noticed that? He’s so quiet but sometimes he’s really funny and he never gets annoyed with me for talking too much. We’re gonna meet up and go hunting in the summer.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Also he’s really tall but it doesn’t even bother me, that’s how great he is. And he’s really good at hockey. Definitely deserved to go second overall.”

“Right.”

“It’s really easy to talk to him and it’s really fun to make him laugh. ’Cause he doesn’t just laugh at anything, so you know it’s a really good joke when you make him laugh. He’s really great. You think he’s great, right?”

“Yeah.” Claude pauses. “Good-looking too, right?”

Travis thinks about it. Patty has a weirdly delicate face, fine-boned and wide-mouthed, and when he smiles he’s probably the most beautiful dude Travis knows in real life. 

“Yeah,” Travis says. “But also he’s just the greatest person. Hey, Claude, do you think Nolan knows how great he is?”

This is suddenly a worrying concern. No one as great as Nolan should be left unaware of it. 

“I don’t know.” Claude sounds like he’s maybe laughing. “Maybe you should tell him?”

“You’re right!” That’s a great idea. Travis starts going through his coat. “Where’s my phone?”

“Hey, no, that’s not what I meant, maybe wait until you see him in person again or something—”

Travis has found his phone and he’s poking at it, trying to get it to unlock. It does after a couple of tries and then he’s trying to dial Patty’s number. 

“Siri, call Patty,” he says. Siri says something, probably that she’s dialing so he puts the phone to his ear. There’s no noise but that makes sense, it’s the middle of the night, Patty probably turned off his phone. It’s fine, Travis can just leave him a voicemail. 

“Hey, Patty,” he starts, “I just wanted to say that you’re the biggest beauty out there and just, a really great guy. I’m so glad we’re friends, dude.” 

Then he hangs up. Claude is having some kind of fit in the driver’s seat, but Travis is too tired to care now, so he just kind of nods off until the truck stops and Claude opens the door. He gets Travis out and into his apartment, drops him into bed. Travis isn’t really sure what he does then, because his bed is nice and soft and comfortable and once the lights are out his eyes are closed and he sleeps like a rock. 

\--

The rest of the season goes in starts and stops, always up against the edge of it. It’s exciting, and exhausting and in the end they make it. They’re going to the play-offs.

And they’re playing the fucking Pens. 

Travis has never felt anything like this. This series means something, not just to them as a team, but to the city of Philadelphia. Those are the defending cup champions and these are the Flyers, their bitter rivals who lost ten games straight this season. 

It starts the way it does: with them losing seven-nil. 

Which. Fuck that. 

The next game they win and then it’s back-and-forth, the hardest hockey Travis has ever played. The hardest and funnest and the most exhausting  –  and in the end, they lose. They make it to six games and they lose. 

It’s not as bad as it could be. For most of them this isn’t the end of something but the beginning, a new hope, dawn on the horizon and all that crap. The team is coming together, slowly, and if they made it to the play-offs this year despite some really terrible play there in the middle, then who knows what they’re going to be able to do next year. 

Locker cleanout is sad, because it always is, but there’s an underlying good cheer. It’s summer and look how far they got this year. Next year will be even better. 

Nolan catches Travis before they leave the arena. 

“You’re coming, right?” He mumbles. 

Travis has been heckling Nolan about the spearfishing thing since he found out about it; there’s no way he’s going to pass up the opportunity to do even more of that up close and in person, while seeing Patty in the summer. 

“Of course, dude. Just let me get settled in and figure out my schedule and I’ll book some flights.”

“Good.”

The smile on Nolan’s face is a broad one, the one that stretches his face and causes the dimple to appear. Travis can’t help himself. They’ve both got their arms full of shit but he just drops his shit and steps forward to wrap Nolan up in a hug. He can’t exactly hug back without dumping his own armful of stuff on the floor but he lets Travis hang on to him for like, a solid ten seconds before Travis steps back and starts picking up his crap. 

“You good, bud?” The smile is smaller now, hovering between sincere and sarcastic. 

“Peachy,” Travis says, checking to make sure he didn’t miss anything. “I’m just gonna miss you, and your stupid face.”

“I’m not gonna miss you,” Nolan rumbles as they start walking again. “Be good to get some peace and quiet.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Travis doesn’t believe a word he says. “I’ll see you in a couple of weeks.”

\--

Travis loves summer. He goes home and rents a cabin. The boat is there, his family is there and he gets to spend all his time outside, fishing on the lake. 

Well, not all his time. A good chunk of his time. There’s still training, and other family stuff and catching up with people he’s known his whole life. It always weirds Travis out a little how everything around him can change, but every summer you come back and fall right into old patterns. 

Still, it’s mostly nice. He gets to see Crouser, which he sure as hell doesn’t get to do much during the season. It’s always better in person, even if they talk a lot. They run with the same crowd as usual, guys and girls he’s known for a couple of years now, the way you do in overlapping friend groups. 

He meets Kaitlin again at a party. It’s mostly a lowkey thing, everyone getting together at the shores of the lake. There’s beer, and a bonfire and they end up sitting next to each other. She has long dark hair and arching eyebrows and she’s home from college for the summer, working some sort of editing job. He asks if he can get her another beer and she gives him this measured sort of look, before smiling with one side of her mouth and saying yes. 

After that beer she asks if he wants to take her home and that’s fun enough that they start hooking up pretty regularly. It’s an easy, uncomplicated sort of thing where they both like each other enough to want to keep doing it but neither of them are invested enough to get very emotional about it. They both mostly do their thing and then sometimes Kaitlin will come over to Travis’s cabin and they have pretty good sex. 

_ u still comin on friday? _ The text from Patty reads. 

Travis is squinting at his phone. Beside him Kaitlin is watching through half-closed eyes. 

_ duh man that’s what i said _

_ i’ll send you the details later _

“Who’re you texting?” Kaitlin asks. 

“Just—a buddy of mine. Patty.”

“Oh?” There’s amusement in the curve of her mouth. 

“It’s important.”

“Important enough to get in on the afterglow, huh?” She teases.

“Yeah, yeah,” he tosses the phone to the side, then rolls over and kisses her. She’s still a little sweaty, from the summer and from what they’d been doing. She kisses back, lazy, until she has to get up and take a shower because she still wants to get some work done. Travis stays in bed because he already worked out today and has nothing else planned until tonight, when he’s going to have dinner with his family. He waves to her as she leaves and she laughs at him, letting the door fall shut behind her. 

It’s mostly like that. He likes her and she likes him but it’s not serious, at all. 

\--

Travis is stupid excited about going to see Patty. Probably more excited than a summer trip to fucking Winnipeg warrants, but whatever. He’s missed Patty’s stupid face, now peeking out at him from under a hat at the airport. 

“What the fuck, man, how big are you trying to get?” Travis pinches Nolan’s arm. Nolan shoves his hand in Travis’s face, but he’s driving so he can’t actually do anything. Travis pinches him again. He looks huge already, compared to how Travis remembers him. Maybe he tries to make him smaller in his memories? Less humiliating that way. 

“Jesus fuck, why are you here?” Nolan grumbles. He’s grinning, ear to ear. 

They go to Patty’s parents’ house first, because that’s where Patty’s still staying. Travis gets it, even though he makes fun of him. There’s a comfort to going home and being fed, being taken care of, not having to worry about finding a place or anything. It makes it seem more like summers in juniors and maybe Travis would have gone back to his parents again last summer too, except his mother had strongly hinted that maybe he should use some of his hard-earned money and rent his own place. 

Nolan’s parents are nice, welcoming. His sisters are there too, sniping at Patty as they take off for their friends’ places. 

Nolan takes Travis up to his room, which is a pretty standard teen boy bedroom. There’s some posters, some old hockey jerseys, medals, trophies. Stuff you’d find in Travis’s room. He launches himself onto the bed, checking the bounciness of the mattress. 

“You’re taking the couch in the study.”

“Rude.” Travis tucks his arms behind his head and raises his eyebrows at Patty, whose eyes are fixed somewhere over Travis’s head. “I’m the guest, I should get the bed.”

Nolan scoffs. 

They’re going to the cabin tomorrow, first thing. Nolan hasn’t actually prepared anything for it yet, so that ends up taking most of the rest of the day. They stock up on food and everything else they need, loading Nolan’s truck up with it. Travis is legitimately excited. Not that he expects the trip to be much different from any other cabin-slash-fishing trip he’s gone on with his buddies, but he’s never hung out with Nolan like this. Actually getting to chill outdoors together instead of in a hotel room or on a couch. He can’t fucking wait. 

They have dinner with the family in the evening. Everyone is really nice. They ask about the season, and how Travis’s training has been going, what the two of them are planning on doing. All the normal stuff. 

After dinner they watch a movie and then Travis fucks off to sleep on the couch. He’s tired enough, flying always takes it out of him and besides they’re getting up pretty early tomorrow. 

He checks his phone before he falls asleep. 

_ Hey, when do you wanna meet up again? _ Kaitlin had texted sometime today and Travis realizes he completely forgot to tell her he’d be gone for the week. He’ll text her back tomorrow, he thinks, then promptly falls asleep. 

\--

He’s woken up the next morning by Nolan thundering into the room and sitting on him. 

Travis lets out a muffled squawk and rolls off the couch, dumping Nolan in the process. There’s some crashing and then some yelling and ten minutes later they’re out the door, Nolan’s parents probably glad to see them go. 

It’s a couple of hours drive to the cabin. Travis takes over music duties. He’s got a playlist exactly for drives like these, the straight lines of road and almost no one out and about yet. The twang of the guitar gets him right in his feelings and when he glances over at Patty he can see the soft curve of his smile. 

The cabin itself is pretty standard. They dump the food they brought inside, get the beers in the fridge and then set up by the lake. Travis is so relaxed. The cool water touches his feet and the sun is shining. Patty is flopped out beside him, every bit of tension that he was carrying on his shoulders during the season bleeding out of him. They don’t say anything for a while, just watch the sun climb higher through the trees. 

“When are you going to take me spearfishing?”

“Tomorrow.” Nolan squints at the sky.

For lunch they make sandwiches with stuff they brought along and in the afternoon they go swimming. Nolan refuses to get out of the water, just sits at the shore and drinks beer after beer. He puts on a shirt at some point to avoid getting sunburnt, but it gets soaked almost instantly, clinging to him like a second skin, defining all the ways he’s already gotten bigger this summer. His hair is getting long too, flicking into his eyes and Travis sits on the shore and watches, the pulling in his gut both familiar and not. 

What if I kiss him, he thinks. 

It’s a weird thought, but Travis has a lot of weird thoughts. What if Zdeno Chara was small? What if a bunch of people are secretly robots, like in Westworld? What if the Leafs actually win a cup? He thinks it and moves on and that’s what he does here, pushes the thought away except for the imprint it leaves in the brain, the afterimage. 

He doesn’t think it again and eventually they stumble to bed, sun-drunk and beer-drunk, crashing in half-made beds. 

They go spearfishing the next day. It’s pretty fun, though more involved than the fishing Travis generally does. He watches Patty’s face during, the intense concentration in his eyes, the way he goes all quiet and still. There’s a lot of focus there. 

They get a couple of fish and then go back to the cabin. Hang out some more, work out a little. On the third day Travis turns off his phone because there’s no signal out here anyway. 

They spend five days at the cabin total and it’s glorious. Travis might’ve once been worried that being in such close proximity would drive Nolan crazy but they’re good. It’s relaxed. Travis doesn’t even talk that much. 

“Where’re you going to live next season?”

The sun has almost gone down behind the trees so it’s pretty late. They’re sitting in the deck chairs and every inch of Patty’s skin is covered in mosquito spray. He smells awful, chemical. Travis doesn’t move. 

“I dunno.” Nolan shrugs. “I have to find a new place, I guess.”

“Hmm.” Travis he picks at the label of his beer. “You should move into my building. There’s some apartments free there, I think. And it’s got a good location, or whatever.”

Nolan’s face is—locked and then unlocked. It’s easy, once you know what to look for.

“You think?”

“Yeah!” Travis sits up. “Of course, it’ll be great. We can carpool and shit.”

It’s the best idea he’s ever had. Nolan’s face is open now, stretchy and smiling, dimpled. Travis loves him so fucking much, the stupid fucker. He kicks out, getting Nolan on his calf and Nolan rolls his eyes and catches his foot on the next kick, holding on and pulling until Travis is low in his chair, breathless from giggling. 

“It’s gonna be great,” he says and smiles at Nolan. “You’ll see.”

\--

When they get back to Winnipeg Travis spends one more night on the couch in the Patrick family study and then the next day Nolan drives him to the airport. 

“I’ll see you at G’s wedding, yeah?” Travis is standing there, one hand on the handle of his carry-on, the other on his hip. He feels weird. He has to go because he’s on the edge of too late for his flight, but he doesn’t want to. Feet firmly planted, looking up at Patty in the middle of the airport lobby. A nervous flutter in his chest. 

“Yeah of course.” Nolan considers him briefly, then uncrosses his arms and steps forward, wraps him in a loose hug. He still smells like summer, the outdoors. 

Travis doesn’t hang on like wants to, just claps him on the back and then turns and makes his way to security. He turns back to look once but there’s already a crowd of people behind him and anyway, why would Patty keep standing around an airport lobby considering what parking costs. 

\--

When Travis finally turns his phone on again there are a bunch of messages he missed, including two from Kaitlin. 

_ Are you gonna answer me?  _

and

_ w o w _

Travis winces. 

_ sorry  _ he texts back  _ I was in visiting patty, we were out at his cabin and I didn’t have any reception. I just got back _

She leaves him on read, which is fair, he supposes. 

\--

Eventually she does text and comes over, though she’s still a little pissed. He offers her a beer and they sit in the deck chairs. There’s no smell of mosquito spray here. 

“Sorry,” Travis says, again. “I was going to text you, but then Nolan woke me up that day and we had to get going and then there was no signal or anything. I wasn’t texting anyone.”

“Yeah.” She doesn’t  _ sound _ pissed anymore, exactly. Just. Reserved, maybe.

“Seriously, like not even my mom. Just me and Patty, spending time at the lake together, you know.”

“Hmm.” She looks out over the lake here, then—sighs. “You talk about him a lot. Patty. Nolan.”

“Well yeah,” Travis is—surprised. “He’s one of my best buddies. He’s important to me.”

She takes a sip of beer, turning the bottle around and around in her hand. “Okay so, weird question but I gotta ask: are you—do you—are you, like, into him?”

“No,” Travis’s mouth says before he even thinks about it because that’s not what this is. 

“Are you sure?” Kaitlin’s voice is gentle. “Because, like. That would be okay.”

“I know,” Travis snaps. It’s 2018, he doesn’t need an ‘it’s okay to be gay’ speech. He knows it’s okay with Kaitlin, with a lot people. But, like, he’s not gay or into Patty or whatever. They’re  _ fine _ . 

“Okay,” Kaitlin says. She’s looking directly at him. She doesn’t know him, not really, not  _ well _ , but sometimes being a little outside of things can give you perspective. For a moment there’s silence, just the two of them looking at each other. Travis’s heart is thundering. 

“You know,” Kaitlin breaks eye contact. Her voice is light, “you’re lucky this isn’t serious or I would be legitimately super pissed at you.”

“What?” Travis laughs. It’s only a little forced. “That wasn’t super pissed?”

“Oh, no. You have no idea what I can get like when I’m  _ super _ pissed.”

They let it go. Things stay the same, more or less. Travis’s training picks up anyway, and Kaitlin has to start getting ready for college and then before he knows it’s Claude’s wedding and then it’s basically time to go back to Philly. There’s the vaguest promise to stay in touch and Travis guesses he’ll see her next summer but really, this is what it was. A summer thing. It doesn’t feel weird not to make more of it. 

\--

Patty moves into an apartment two floors above Travis and doesn’t tell him. Travis just gets a text that says  _ come over _ and then apartment number.

“What the fuck dude, when did you move in?” Travis barges inside as soon as Nolan opens the door. He’s going to drink all his Gatorade in revenge. 

“Welcome to my crib,” Nolan mumbles and grins at him. 

Someone clearly helped him set up because it looks pretty nice. There’s a big couch and gaming system that Travis is going to try out in a minute. There’s a vase on an end table. Who the fuck would buy Nolan a vase?

The kitchen is nice. Big, with countertops made of some fancy material Travis doesn’t know the name of. There are two containers from their favorite Indian takeout place on the counter. Travis opens one. 

“What the fuck, man, this isn’t the butter chicken.”

“The other one.” Nolan is opening cabinets, one after the other until finally he finds the plates and grabs two. Travis inspects the other container, which does, in fact, contain his butter chicken. 

They eat on the couch, christening the navy fabric with the first spilled crumbs of rice and then watch a movie. They haven’t seen each other since Claude’s wedding and that had been fun but it hadn’t exactly been the two of them hanging out. Travis feels his whole body relax as he sinks into the couch, listening to Nolan’s stupid giggle, the louder chortle he gives when something’s really funny. It’s a big fucking couch but they’re big boys. The way they stretch out, take up space, they’re touching, brushing against each other. There’s a sliver of ankle between Nolan’s sock and the worn-out ends of his sweats, his feet propped up on Travis’s thigh. Travis focuses on the movie again. 

Whenever he looks at Nolan, Nolan is looking back at him. Sometimes just out of the corner of his eye, a quick glance. 

It’s good to be back together. 

\--

The season starts the way seasons do. Win one, lose one, win two. At least Travis is having a better start than he did last year. 

He feels restless. It’s nothing specific, a general, indeterminate prickling that keeps him awake at night, makes him skate harder, push himself more. He wants something, but he doesn’t exactly know what. 

One thing that doesn’t change with the new season is how much time he spends with Patty. It’s basically the same as last year, maybe more. Road roommates, apartments in the same building, but Travis still doesn’t feel like he’s getting tired of him. If anything he wants more: all his time spent with Patty feels like the best time. 

In Arizona they watch Bohemian Rhapsody in the movies. Travis watches Freddie Mercury kiss his man and maybe feels too much about it but in a way he doesn’t really want to examine. 

Nolan blasts Queen constantly after that. 

\--

Even with the season being the way it is (that is: eventful) and Travis thinking the things he’s thinking, there are still parts of it that are normal. They’re a hockey team. They play games, and sometimes they win them. The wins feel a little desperate, a little on edge and so it’s maybe no surprise when the post-game win celebration gets a little rowdy.

It’s just a normal win but there have been few enough of those that the chance to celebrate is seized with a little more vigor than it usually would have. There are more of them here at the bar than there would be generally, and Travis has already had one more beer than he usually would. They’re all sitting in a booth, too many of them squashed together. He’s right on the outside, only Patty on his left, pressed right against him. He can feel the warmth of him, one arm slung casually over Travis’s shoulder to make room. 

There’s a buzzing in Travis’s skin that’s partly the win, partly the alcohol and partly the feeling of Patty’s thigh against his own, the way he’s almost tucked into him and doesn’t really mind at all. 

He’s feeling good. It’s hard to not feel good after winning, the glorious triumph of a mid-November rout, but there’s an edge to it, both to the win and to the way Travis feels. He feels that itchiness, not literally but in his insides, like something needs to get out. His leg twitches against Patty’s until he feels Patty squeeze his shoulder, the arm around him tightening, warm and heavy. 

Travis turns to him. Nolan is looking at him, mouth tilted into a half-smile. He’s got a weird nose, Travis thinks. Sort of big. Nolan blinks at him, a slow lowering of his spiky, dark lashes over washed-out blue eyes. 

“You good, bud?” he asks.

There’s no decision Travis makes. He just looks at Nolan and then he leans forward and kisses him, square on the mouth. It’s firm and it lingers, one, two, three seconds, then he pulls back and looks. Nolan’s eyes are wide and he’s looking right at Travis, intent, searching, the slope of his eyebrows, the mess of his hair tucked back under his backwards hat. Travis wants, so much.

Across the table Simmer lets out a laugh and when Travis looks over, he’s smirking at them behind his beer.

“I gotta go,” Travis yelps and gets up, tripping over his feet. Maybe Nolan says something behind him, but it’s loud and Nolan talks really low, so Travis can’t be sure. He stumbles outside, the cool air hitting his face. He doesn’t have his jacket but he’s not going back inside for it.

There’s almost no one around outside and Travis wanders a few steps down from the bar and sits down at the curb. He wonders if he should an order an Uber home but all of his stuff is still inside and just leaving everything and taking off would probably just add to the weirdness. 

The curb is kind of digging into Travis’s ass and he’s going a little numb from that and from the cold, but he can’t make himself go back inside. He also can’t think about what he just did, so he just kind of sits there, frozen. Cars pass on the street. People walk behind him. He really, really hopes no one recognizes him. 

“Hey.” It’s Claude who’s come to find him because apparently kissing your teammate and then running off is enough to warrant captain intervention. Travis groans. 

“Yeah,” Claude says and settles down next to Travis on the curb. He doesn’t have a jacket either but whatever. “So, the guys all think it was a joke or a prank or something.”

“Oh,” Travis says because that hadn’t even occurred to him. Which probably goes to show how much it wasn’t a joke and how fucked up he is about this. His head’s still not clear, which mostly accounts for the next thing he blurts out. “It wasn’t a joke.”

He immediately wishes he could shove the words back in his mouth but they hang there, clear and clean. 

“I thought so,” Claude says. “But they’re all oblivious straight people, so you know. Can’t expect much.”

Travis stares at him. He’d kind of figured they were all straight people around here.

Claude rolls his eyes when he says as much. 

“Well, I’m not. And you have a giant crush on Patty, so I’m pretty sure you’re not.”

“You’re married,” Travis says. He attended that wedding; Claude is definitely married to a woman. 

“Still bisexual,” Claude says, then, when Travis just stares at him, sighs and reaches out and wraps his arm around him. He pulls him in until Travis is settled against Claude’s side, the sort of hug that’s warm and comforting and grounding, and Travis both wants to lean into it and pull away and run. 

“So this is all new to you, huh,” Claude says and Travis sort of half shrugs. He doesn’t know what all this is, this overwhelming desire to be near Nolan all the time, to talk to him, to make him laugh, curl up next to him. And now kiss him apparently. People keep calling it a crush and the evidence seems to be on their side but Travis isn’t—Travis hasn’t ever been—like he’s  _ twenty-one _ , that’s too old to be having a crisis about his sexuality. 

That bit makes Claude laugh. 

“It’s really not,” he says. “And you’re doing fine. But maybe talk to Patty instead of just kissing him in front of the whole team.”

“Uh.” That sounds like the worst idea ever. “No?”

Claude lets out a sigh like Travis is being unreasonable here, which he’s not. He’s not gonna talk to Patty. There’s no way that conversation wouldn’t be weird and awful and possibly end with Patty not being his friend anymore and there’s no way Travis is going to risk  _ that _ .

“Okay, okay,” Claude placates him. “Let’s go inside, though. I’m freezing my ass off.”

Travis nods. 

Travis has no idea how long he was actually outside, but inside is more or less the same as when he left it. The table has shuffled around some, so when he slides into a seat he’s next to Provy, who just nods at him. Patty slides his beer over to him from the other side of the table and grins a little, like normal. 

That makes Travis’s insides twist up. Like he doesn’t want Patty to  _ know _ but he also doesn’t want him to think it was a  _ joke _ . 

He spends the rest of the night on the rest of his beer and then peaces out of there relatively quickly as soon as the first group of guys make their way home. Patty goes too and they share an Uber with a bunch of people and then it’s just the two of them, walking up to the building. 

Travis doesn’t say anything, but he’s not really paying attention either. He’s trying not to think about the kiss, but it keeps replaying in his mind: the feel of Nolan’s mouth, those three seconds of contact. He wishes there wasn’t an ache in his chest to go with it, but you can’t always get what you want, apparently. 

“Uh,” Nolan says and then nothing more when Travis looks at him. 

Travis isn’t gonna ask. Not tonight. So he just pushes the button to the elevator and gets out on his floor, waving goodbye as the door closes behind him. He looks at Nolan’s face as it does but there’s nothing he can read on it, neutral and grumpy as always. It makes him feel almost unbearably fond and he stumbles into his apartment and into his bed with that inside him, warm and tipsy. 

\--

Travis spends a couple of days avoiding Nolan, mostly because he himself is ignoring the newfound knowledge that he wants to kiss Nolan and whatever else that means. That maybe that makes him bisexual. He doesn’t want to deal with it. 

Instead he ignores it and for right now that includes ignoring Patty as well.

He feels bad about it, because it’s not Patty’s fault, and he tries not to be obvious about it. It’s just…there’s a bunch of errands he’s been putting off and now seems like a really good time to get to those. Buy some new sheets, some carpets, actually try cooking one of those things his mom always sends him recipe links to ever since he mentioned he might want to try cooking for himself some time. 

It doesn’t work because he still misses Patty. He texts him about his opinion on the carpet. Wants to know his opinion on Travis’s cooking (not terrible in Travis’s opinion). Thinks about clean sheets and what he could need them for in association with Nolan. 

That’s its own thing. 

Because until now Travis was straight. He’s figured out sex with women and it had all been kind of straight forward, the information already prepared for him so by the time he got there he mostly knew what he was supposed to do and the rest was just trial and error. He can’t imagine himself have sex with a dude. Not Nolan specifically, just any dude. The idea of it, getting down on his knees and giving a blow job or like, taking it up the ass or whatever, it’s too much. Makes him feel weird and hot and strange so he shoves it to the side, into the ‘don’t think about it’ pile. 

There’s other stuff in that pile, like the fact that if he gets together with Nolan or even some other dude in the vague future (because now that this has happened once there’s no guarantee it won’t happen again) it’s going to require an explanation. He’s going to have to sit people down and specifically tell them that he’s dating a dude, people like his friends and his teammates and his parents. 

Travis kind of wants to be mad at them for never bothering to think that this is a thing that could happen, but he probably can’t since he never thought of it himself. 

He’s still sort of mad at them. He doesn’t care that it’s stupid.

\--

“Hey,” Nolan says, on Travis’s couch because ignoring Nolan hadn’t lasted. They’re like two-thirds through an episode, sprawled out on the couch and the empty food containers spread out on the coffee table. They’re sitting next to each other and their shoulders keep brushing, which keeps distracting Travis from what’s going on in the show. 

“Yeah?”

“Uh,” Nolan isn’t looking away from the TV and his arm is kind of twitching so Travis turns to face more towards him. “So, you know when you kissed me last week?”

Travis chews his lip. “Yeah.”

“Why’d you do that?”

Travis could shut this down now. He could say it was a dumb prank and Nolan would let it go and they’d probably never talk about it again. 

Nolan is looking at him.

Nolan is looking at him and there’s nothing showing on his face really, all closed off but there’s a flick of his gaze, from Travis’s eyes to his mouth, to the wall behind him. Just a hint of vulnerability and it’s enough that Travis opens his mouth. 

“I just—really wanted to.”

He hopes he doesn’t immediately have a reason to regret that. Nolan is staring straight into his eyes now and the air between them feels charged, their bodies angled towards each other and Travis is watching when Nolan’s gaze slowly wanders down to his mouth again. 

“You wanna do it again?” he asks, and it’s low and gravely and scraping. 

Travis doesn’t answer right away. He looks at Nolan, at the way he’s angled himself towards Travis, the laser focus of his gaze. It’s heavy now, quiet, the only sound the television but Travis has mostly lost track of that now. He’s not stupid, he knows Nolan asking is an invitation. He can lean over right now and close the gap between them and Nolan…Nolan would probably kiss him back. 

For a moment he’s frozen, then he can’t think of a single reason why he isn’t moving yet and then his mouth is on Nolan’s before the thought is properly done. Nolan meets him, leans in and their mouths open, tongues sliding against each other and Nolan sinks his hand in Travis’s hair, Travis’s hand curls around Nolan’s bicep. 

When Travis pulls back it’s not far, just enough that he can survey Nolan’s expression. He doesn’t look much different than normal, expression still, but he doesn’t move away and he keeps carding his fingers through Travis’s hair. Travis doesn’t want to talk now anyway, so he leans forward again, brings his other hand up to cup Nolan’s face. 

It’s different, kissing Nolan properly. Travis is aware of everything, the fine drag of stubble he can feel, the way he sucks on Nolan’s lip, the small noise he gets when he applies teeth. He wants more, suddenly, all of this so incredible and hot when it had been quasi-unimaginable a few days before and when Nolan moves in, angles his head differently and pulls his hair a little, Travis’s breath hitches and he pushes back. Pushes until Nolan’s back is against the couch again and then Travis swings himself over, right onto his lap. Nolan’s hands settle on his hips, large and warm, and he smiles up at Travis. 

“Uh,” Travis says, and Nolan laughs at him and then leans up to kiss him again. It stays like that for a while, hands above the waist. It’s like there’s a line, like Nolan touching his ass will mean something more than the fact that Travis is rapidly getting hard in his sweats. Nolan puts his mouth on Travis’s neck and it feels like an experiment. It feels good. Travis tilts his head and he can feel the scrape of Nolan’s teeth. He whines and jerks forward, grinding himself into Nolan, and Nolan—Nolan makes a noise and jerks up. He’s hard too, Travis can feel it, and they break apart and stare at each other. 

Nolan’s cheeks are pink and his eyes are glassy. His hair is a mess from where Travis messed with it. Travis licks his lips, then swallows. He sees Nolan’s eyes follow the motion and he leans forward, kisses him again. Then he reaches back, takes the hand Nolan is still resting on his back, and slides it down to his ass. 

His heart is beating so fast he thinks it might explode but Nolan kisses him harder, gives an experimental squeeze and oh,  _ oh _ . Nolan’s other hand comes down from his shoulder, then slides up under Travis’s shirt. 

There are no more thoughts in Travis’s head. He’s just feelings, his body in Nolan’s hands, Nolan under him. It works, they fit together, against each other and eventually everything is so much, too much, Travis has to pull back. His head rests against Nolan’s collarbone and he’s panting. He needs—he wants to come but he’s not sure how to ask for that. 

“Bed?” Nolan asks and Travis shudders, then nods against him. 

The walk to the bed is short and they keep touching each other, hands roaming. They’re kissing as they enter the room, Nolan urging Travis out of his shirt and eventually they’re on the bed, skin against skin. 

It’s so much. Nolan is so big above him, and that’s both hot and scary so Travis chooses to focus on the bits that are hot. He digs his fingers into Nolan’s shoulders, let them drag over his back. Nolan pants against his neck, wet, hot. His thigh is between Travis’s legs and Travis is shoving into him, seeking contact. He’s babbling, maybe, muttering nonsense and Nolan digs his teeth into his neck a little and  _ fuck— _

Travis comes.

Nolan looks unbearably smug about it when Travis blinks back to himself. Travis shoves him until he turns over. Gets his mouth on Nolan’s mouth, gets his hand on Nolan’s dick. It’s hard and silky in his touch and Travis doesn’t think about that, just wraps his hand around him, smooths the way with the leaking precoma and jerks him off until Nolan is shuddering, coming too. 

“Ha,” Travis says. He has come on his hand. He wipes it on the sheets. Nolan grins at him. 

They’re still touching, almost everywhere. Travis still wants to kiss Nolan, looking flushed and messy in his bed. He swallows, doesn’t know what to do with that. 

Nolan looks like he’s just worked out, his skin patchy red and his hair everywhere. The flush stretches down his chest and he’s so—fucking big and here and Travis is still half on top of him. Nolan’s hand has wandered to his hair again, petting Travis gently. 

They stay like that for a bit. It’s warm, sprawled out against each other. Eventually Travis’s eyes start drifting shut. 

“Hey,” Nolan nudges him. “I’m gonna go, okay?”

“Huh?” Travis’s eyes fly open. Nolan is smiling at him. 

“I gotta go to sleep, dude. I’ll pick you up tomorrow for practice, yeah?”

“Uh,” Travis tries to read his expression. He looks chilled. Relaxed. “Okay, sure.”

For a moment Nolan doesn’t move, then he leans forward, kisses Travis one more time, gentle, quick. Then he wiggles out from under Travis and leaves, snagging up his clothes. Travis watches him. There’s a part of him that doesn’t want him to go, that thinks that if he goes then this is all over, but most of him is already going to sleep. By the time Nolan closes the door behind him there are only one-two-three more heartbeats and the Travis is gone, off to dreamland. 

\--

The next morning Travis wakes up and instantly remembers. Remembers last night and Nolan’s mouth on his, Nolan’s dick in his hand. He remembers the way Nolan touched him, trailing fingers and smiling eyes. 

He’s still alone in his bed. 

Travis can’t stay still, jumps out of bed and into the shower, scrambling around his kitchen to make breakfast. There’s a weird energy for him and he’s glad he has practice soon, leg bouncing as he waits for the coffee to finish. 

He’ll drive to practice with Nolan. That’s what they always do, it’s not going to change just because they hooked up. 

Travis opens the fridge, surveys the contents and closes it again. He’s not prepared for breakfast. 

It’s not weird that Nolan left after they finished. It’s not like he just snuck out right after: they cuddled and then he wanted to sleep in his own bed. He kissed Travis before he left. 

The coffee maker beeps to indicate it’s done and Travis whirls around to pour himself a cup, hands steady. He knocks the sugar over and has to clean it up, cursing to himself. 

It’s whatever. They’ll talk about it after practice, maybe. Or they won’t and it’ll be fine. He doesn’t need to put a label on this. He wanted to have sex with Nolan, and he did. It’s good. 

Travis drinks his coffee. It tastes like shit but he can’t be bothered to make another cup. He puts that one in the dishwasher, then looks at the clock. There’s still time before he has to go to practice. 

Where he’ll see Nolan. A thing that for some reason makes his whole body go tense now even though he still wants to see him so much. 

The time before practice is going to be hell, Travis thinks sadly, then wanders into the living room. Maybe he can at least play a round of Fortnite. 

\--

Nolan knocks on his door to get him to practice, the same way he always does, and Travis definitely wasn’t sitting around waiting for him but he’s at the door so fast he’s almost out of breath. 

“Hi,” he says. 

“Hi,” Nolan mumbles and grins at him. 

For a moment they just stand there looking at each other, then Travis turns into the house to grab his jacket and the car keys, Nolan waiting at the door for him. They walk to the car together and for a little bit neither of them says anything. It’s a silence that feels full to Travis, like it’s just between them and then expands, filling the whole hallway and he knows he’s not good with silence. He’s not good with this one either, last about thirty seconds into it before he’s casting around for something to talk about and then launches into speculation about the new drills Hakstol said they were going to do today. He doesn’t care about the drills but Nolan answers his dumb questions and the silence retreats until it’s just sitting in his throat, filled with the things they aren’t talking about. 

Nolan fiddles with the radio in the car and Travis voices his opinion on every single thing that comes up in the show they end up listening to. It’s not actually different from any other time they drive to practice together but today it makes Travis nervous. He doesn’t really want to talk about last night, not now when they have to focus on hockey, but it feels weird to just have it sitting in the back of his mind, reappearing every time he so much as glances at Nolan. 

We hooked up yesterday, Travis thinks and now it somehow seems wild and crazy. Like last night was somehow removed from this world and he doesn’t know if he can go back there again. 

He shoves that thought from his head as soon as it appears and starts talking about the Eagles. 

It gets more normal at practice with other people there and they actually do have to pay attention to do the new drills. Travis tries hard, he always does. The exertion drives any other thought straight from his head and afterwards in the locker room he doesn’t feel nervous any more. It’s like all the energy has been drained from him and he can look at Nolan and think about what happened and not feel like he’s about to jump out of his skin. 

The drive home is normal, too, and it’s normal when Travis instructs Nolan to come over for lunch. It’s normal when they order Thai food and it’s normal when they settle on the couch and pull up NHL19. Everything is so goddamn normal that when Travis turns to look at Nolan between rounds, he’s suddenly bowled over with how much he wants to kiss him. Again. 

It’s—Nolan is still wearing a stupid toque and he’s smiling at the screen and he looks so good in profile, the line of his nose and way the smile tugs at his lips. Travis can’t stop staring. 

“What?” Nolan turns to look at him and, God, Travis hadn’t realized they were so close together. Nolan is looking at him now, one eyebrow raised and he’s still smiling and before Travis can put a thought together, he’s leaning in and kissing Nolan.

Nolan drops the controller and kisses him back. 

It’s hot and wet and just as good as it was yesterday. This time Nolan sticks his hand down Travis’s pants right there on the couch, wrapped around him as he pants into Travis’s neck. Travis comes all over Nolan’s big hand, swearing and clutching his shoulders. 

For a moment they just look at each other. Nolan’s hair is loose, strands of it falling forward and without thinking Travis reaches out and brushes one strand back, tucking it behind Nolan’s ear. His hand lingers, almost cupping Nolan’s face. He can see him swallow. 

Kissing is good and Travis can feel Nolan’s hard on against his hip. He pushes into experimentally, gets a groan and nip for his trouble. It makes him grin, and do it again. 

“Do not make me come in my pants, I swear to God,” Nolan grunts. 

“I mean—” Travis starts and Nolan bites him, shoves his pants down and gets a hand around himself. It’s fast from there, Travis barely has time to prop himself up to watch properly. Nolan makes a truly stupid face when he comes. Travis considers telling him that, then decides against it and pushes against him so he can get up. 

He comes back with tissues and when they’ve cleaned themselves up they get back into the game. They sit close enough that they’re touching, thighs against each other, elbows jostling. 

\--

It becomes a regular thing after that. Mostly at home, sometimes on the road. It’s never, like, planned beforehand really. Travis just sees Nolan, doing something that he always does like chewing on the string of his hoodie while scrolling through his phone and he’ll be filled with the overwhelming urge to kiss him. Mostly he’ll just do it. Pull Nolan’s phone out of his hands and climb into his lap, kiss him until they’re breathless and then usually that will lead into one of them getting a hand on the other’s dick. 

Travis tries not to think about it much. It feels good and it hasn’t changed anything between them. He doesn’t want to think about the ways he feels during—after. The full-up feeling in his chest, strangling and hot and soft all at once. He doesn’t want to know what it all means. 

Nolan touches Travis’s face, thumb resting on his mouth. 

“Will you blow me?” he mumbles. 

Travis’s whole body goes tight and taut. He doesn’t know if he’s ready to do that but he also sees the way Nolan is looking at him, hungry and eager, and, well. Travis hasn’t ever been a coward so he nods, sharp. 

They’re already in bed, Nolan’s bed this time, and they’re not wearing much clothing. It’s easy to scoot to the edge of the bed, sink to his knees. Nolan scrambles to meet him there, settled on the edge of the bed and there’s a moment of hesitation where Nolan’s dick is just like, there, present and in front of his face, then Travis reaches out and wraps his hand around it. 

Up to that point it’s really no different from anything he’s done before but there’s a tension between Travis’s shoulder blades. It’s not—not that he doesn’t  _ want _ to. He’s had this thought before and it’s. Hot. It’s hot, somehow, to be here, Nolan looking down at him, eyes wider than Travis has ever seen them. He’s just not sure he’ll be any good and if there’s anything Travis hates in the world, it’s not being good at stuff. 

Whatever. Keep it simple. He leans forward, licks at Nolan’s dick, gets it into his mouth. Nolan makes a noise, a punched-out release of breath and then it’s just—trying to find a rhythm, trying to keep things wet and slick. He doesn’t try for anything fancy and then it’s not long before Nolan touches his head. 

“Trav,” he says and it’s low and scraping and hot. “Trav, I’m gonna—”

Travis pulls back, keeps working him with his hand and when he comes it splashes onto his face, wet and warm. 

“Gross, dude.” Travis wipes his chin. Nolan laughs at him, falls back onto the bed but Travis still hasn’t gotten off so he climbs up on him, straddling Nolan’s hips. He gets a hand on himself, bites his lips and looks at Nolan, the flushed, sweaty from of him, all the way down his torso. His hair is in his face and he reaches out to touch Travis and it’s—

It feels right, to be there, which is a weird feeling to have when you’re also fully concentrating on jerking off onto your best friend’s torso, but there it is. Travis comes and then he lies down on Nolan and he only feels weird about it for a little bit. 

\--

That night Travis can’t fall asleep properly. He keeps thinking about it, getting on his knees and putting his mouth on Nolan’s dick. It’s—he  _ wanted _ to, it was hot and Nolan had liked it, it’s just—

It’s real right. He’s a cocksucker now, yeah? And like, okay, whatever he feels for Nolan, that’s something but like. It’s just this one thing. Just him wanting to kiss Nolan and that didn’t feel like enough to label himself bisexual or something. That’s for like, the real shit. When you’re really gay. Bisexual. Whatever, not straight in any case. 

But now he’s sucked dick and that’s real. Real-er. 

He needs to talk to someone about this or he’s going to explode into a million little pieces. Travis roots around on his nightstand for his phone and calls Lawson in the dark. It’s fine, it’s like three hours time difference to Arizona, Lawson’s still gonna be awake and he’ll—

Lawson picks up. He squints at the screen, it looks like he’s sitting on his couch, the light on behind him. 

“Why’re you calling me from the dark, Trav?” 

Travis scrambles into a sitting position on the bed, hesitates a moment, then flicks on the lamp on his nightstand. He kind of wants to leave it off, but that also feels like the cowardly thing to do. 

“Hi.”

“What’s up?” Lawson yawns. “Shouldn’t you be asleep?”

“I think I might be bisexual,” Travis blurts out. 

Lawson’s face goes slack, surprised. He blinks at Travis. 

“O…kay? Uh. Why?”

For a moment Travis pauses. He doesn’t know how to put the swirling maelstrom inside of him into words, not in a way he thinks Lawson will understand. So he goes with the bit that he’ll get. 

“I, uh, had sex with Pa—with a dude.”

Expressions flick across Lawson’s face, like he can’t quite decide which one to settle on until finally he comes to rest somewhere between neutral and concerned. 

“Okay and did you, like…like it?”

Travis chews his tongue. 

“Yeah.”

“And you still like girls?”

“Yeah.” Travis hasn’t, like, checked recently, being distracted by the whole Patty thing, but that’s not a thing he’s ever doubted. 

“Um,” Lawson scrubs a hand across his face. “I don’t know what to tell you, dude? Sounds pretty bisexual to me?”

“Yeah but,” Travis swallows. “Like I haven’t ever felt anything like this before? What if it’s just—I don’t know. A one-off or whatever. What if I just like him, no other guys? Or what if I’m imagining the whole thing and like, three days from now I’ll be like, ‘well that was fun but it’s not for me’ or something? I mean, it just fucking happened; it could just disappear again, right?”

Lawson’s eyes are wide and he looks a little out of his depth. 

“Do you think that could happen?”

“I—” Travis wants to cry. He doesn’t, but he wants to. “No.”

“So, you wanna keep hooking up with this dude and, like, date him?”

“Yeah.”

“Then, I dunno, focus on that maybe? It doesn’t really matter what you call yourself, right? You can figure it out later, if things work out, if you’re bi or gay or straight or whatever. It’ll sort itself out.”

Travis takes a breath, deep, then exhales loudly. 

“Okay.”

“Okay,” Lawson grins at him, crooked and kind. 

“Thanks,” Travis says. “That’s…good advice actually.”

“Of course,” Lawson laughs. “That’s why you called me, right? Because I’m the best at advice. Now go to bed or you’ll die at practice tomorrow. That’s also advice, by the way.”

“Oh, fuck off,” Travis says. “Like you go to bed so early.”

“Good night,” Lawson says. “And—I love you dude. No matter what you end up figuring out, okay?”

That last bit is weirdly earnest and a little awkward, like Lawson felt he still had to reassure Travis. Maybe because he hadn’t gotten it in earlier. 

“Thanks,” Travis says, and means it. “Love you, too. Goodnight.”

He hangs up and it’s a little easier to lay in bed after that. Sleep still doesn’t come right away but he also doesn’t feel like he wants to open all the windows and scream. Lawson is right, probably. He doesn’t have to figure everything out right now. 

\--

There are a couple of rituals that Travis and Nolan have for themselves. They guys make fun of them for it sometimes, the way they’ll wander off together or the time they got that chef to come to their hotel room (which Travis maintains was a top ten idea). It’s fine, it’s their thing. 

One of their things is getting sushi together at the Bleu Sushi. It’s a place Nolan had discovered by himself his first year in Philly and then he’d dragged Travis there and since then they’ve been coming back, sometimes twice a week to take a table in the corner and eat their weight in sushi. 

Other guys on the team know about this place and it’s not like they only come here as the two of them but it does happen more often than not. Like now, when they’re settled into their usual table and the waiter’s brought their drinks. Travis is flicking through the menu, trying to decide whether he wants to get his usual or he’s going to go for something new. 

The tables are tiny and their knees keep bumping under the table. Nolan has pushed his long-ass legs over so that he’s way on Travis’s side, foot curled around Travis’s ankle. He’s concentrating on his menu, even though he always gets the same thing every time they come here. His hair is washed, slicked back and he’s wearing a nice shirt and jeans. Travis looks down himself. He’s also wearing a nice-ish shirt and jeans, or at least not a sweatpants and sweater combo. He hadn’t really thought about it when he’d put them on, except how he’d thought about how Patty looked at him when he wore this shirt. 

“You wanna share a starter?” Nolan asks. “The shrimp yakitori?”

“Uh—” For a moment Travis is too caught up in how much this looks and feels like a date even though it’s exactly the same thing they’ve been doing together since they’ve known each other. Except maybe the footsie. The footsie is new. 

“Actually. no, let’s get the red snapper thing.” Nolan looks up at him, catches Travis staring. “What?”

“Nothing,” Travis looks back down at his menu. “Philadelphia roll?”

Nolan snorts and kicks him because Travis knows he hates it when they put cream cheese in his sushi. They get the starter and their sushi. For a few minutes it’s quiet as they shove piece after piece into their mouths until they eventually slow down enough to talk, mostly about old hunting trips. It feels like every other time they’ve been here except for how Travis is still acutely aware of how little difference there is between this and some dates he’s taken girls on in the past. 

“I’ll get it,” Nolan says when they check comes. “You paid last time.”

The smile he gives Travis is crooked and sweet. 

When they get back to their apartment block Nolan follows Travis to his place, like it’s not even a question. It isn’t really. They go in and Nolan settles himself down on the couch, starts flicking through the movie selection while Travis goes to the kitchen to get them drinks. 

When he comes back Nolan is already settled in, spread out in a way that leaves an exact space by his side for Travis. And Travis is going to sit there, and then they’ll probably make out during the movie if it’s boring, or after if it’s good, and then—

“Are we dating?” 

Travis has never seen Nolan’s face go red so fast before. It’s sort of interesting, because he’s always sort of rosy, but this is a spread you can watch crawl over his skin. 

“Uh—”

“I just thought—” Travis waves a hand, carefully, because he’s still holding their beers. “Like, this all just really seems like we’re dating.”

Nolan works his jaw, then gestures at the rest of the couch. “Fucking—sit down or something.”

Travis does. He hands Nolan his beer. Nolan takes it, picks at the label a little. 

“Do you want to be dating?”

“Uh—yeah.” It’s probably—probably not cool to admit that so quickly but Travis does. His—feelings for Nolan sit in chest all the time and like, he ignores them mostly because this thing that they have where they’re best friends and also Nolan sucks his dick now is pretty fucking awesome but—

It’s pretty big. They’re pretty big feelings. 

“Cool,” Nolan’s eyes crinkle when he smiles. “Yeah, okay, cool, that’s—me too.”

“Oh.” Travis doesn’t know what to do, or say to that. His heart is in his throat and he feels—good, like he wants to explode, like everything inside of him is going to burst apart, like he’s already been put back together, but better. 

“I think I have a crush on you,” he blurts out. 

Time freezes. Nolan’s face does this weird, like, twitch where Travis can’t quite tell what emotion he’s trying to express and then he’s laughing, rumbling and soft and then he’s up against Travis, kissing him. 

They’re still holding their beers, trying not to spill them. Travis’s other hand clutches Nolan’s arm, holding on as Nolan kisses him. His eyes are crinkling when he pulls back. 

“You think?” He asks. “Haven’t figured it out yet?”

“Shut the fuck up, you know what I mean,” Travis shoves at his shoulder. 

“I know.” He looks smug about it, but happy, too. Sets his beer on the coffee table, takes Travis’s from his hands and sets it beside it. Then he grabs Travis, hauls him in until he’s settled across Nolan’s lap, a mirror of the first time they made out on this couch. 

“Me too, you know,” he says and kisses Travis again, and it’s that happy feeling again, all through his body, the awareness of where every part of him is and how he’s touching Nolan, suffusing him. It’s so easy, then, to feel like this. 

\--

For the most part, it’s easy to date Patty. It doesn’t actually change much in how they were before, especially since they’d started hooking up, but Travis still feels happier. It’s like he’s been given permission for his feelings and then it’s easy to feel like he wants, do what he wants. They already spend all their time together anyway, but now all the other parts, the looking and the touching and the wanting, don’t feel like too much. 

“Hey Travis,” Claude says, scrubbing his hair with a towel, “you like Chinese food?”

“Huh?” Travis is pulled out of his admittedly embarrassing reverie of staring at Nolan. “Yeah, Chinese is good.”

“Cool. You going home after this?”

“Yeah.” There’s nowhere else to go really, and having a sort of fucked up shoulder didn’t really make it fun to be anywhere else anyway. 

“Good,” Claude says, but Nolan is taking his shirt off and Travis is still getting used to how distracted that makes him, the full size and strength of him and the way he knows him now, intimately and close. Nolan grins when he catches him looking, the shitty one, full of himself but he’s also pink in the cheeks so Travis will forgive him the knowing smirk. 

They ride home together, bickering about the radio, and Travis follows Nolan into his place. He makes a beeline to Nolan’s room and flops down on the bed, which, Nolan shouldn’t have gotten such a big and comfortable bed and he should definitely not have let Travis sleep there if he didn’t want it invaded at every turn. 

For now he only grumbles a little as he follows Travis on top of the sheets and he doesn’t grumble at all when Travis kisses him, wet and gentle, a big hand traveling along Travis’s back to his ass in order to pull him in. He might have grumbled about Travis not jerking him off (because of his shoulder!!) but he seems to like the blow job Travis goes with instead fine, gets him back so good Travis doesn’t have the brain power to do anything but lie there, panting and willing his brain to come back online. 

Nolan climbs out of bed after, which is stupid because there isn’t even a mess to clean up (big pro for swallowing right there) but he comes back a minute later and drops a fresh ice pack on Travis’s back, and his phone right on his head. 

“Got a message,” he mumbles as he digs through the clothes now strewn on the floor to find his boxers. 

Travis squints at the screen as positions the ice pack correctly on his shoulder. There are a couple of Instagram notifications and a message from Claude, sent like a minute ago. 

_ Where are you?? _ It reads. 

_ Nolan’s _ , he texts back. 

_ Well get to your place, I’m here _ . Is what the next message he gets reads, which is super fucking weird to be honest. His phone pings again. 

_ I brought Chinese. _

Travis considers. He’s kind of post-coital, ready to just sack out right on top of Nolan but on the other hand, he’s kind of hungry and making his captain wait outside of his door with Chinese food is probably a bad idea. He groans and sits up. 

“What?” Nolan asks. 

“Captain’s here,” Travis starts looking for his clothes. “He brought food.”

Nolan considers, then shrugs. “Okay.”

Claude really is standing in front of Travis’s door when they get there, absently scrolling through his phone. He looks up when he hears them and then shakes his head a little, mostly to himself. 

“Hey, G,” Travis lets them in. “What’d you bring us?”

It’s quite a selection, including the sweet-sour chicken that Travis likes best. He has to shove a bunch of his mail and old recycling off the dining table before it’s usable, while Nolan gets the plates from the kitchen. Claude just watches them as he unpacks box after box of take-out. 

It’s a little weird that Claude would just show up here unannounced, with food or without, though when they start eating Claude starts questioning Travis about his shoulder so he figures it’s probably that. Just the captain looking out for his teammate, making sure he’s not hurting himself worse. And Travis isn’t, he isn’t even doing anything strenuous, just whining at Nolan until he does it. He doesn’t tell Claude that, except to say that Nolan’s been helping him out, which makes Nolan kick his ankle. Travis grins at him. 

“Hey Nolan,” Claude says suddenly, “there’s a convenience store right down the street from here, right? Why don’t you go get us some ice cream.”

“Uh,” Nolan’s gaze flicks to Travis. He tries to convey with his face that he has no idea what’s going on, but he’s not sure he manages it because Nolan’s face doesn’t move as he shrugs and gets up.

“Anything special?”

“Nah,” Claude grins. “Just get me vanilla.”

Nolan shuffles out of the apartment. Travis listens to the door open and shut behind him, watching Claude warily. He’s still grinning to himself. When Nolan is gone, he leans forward.

“He didn’t ask you what you wanted.”

“He knows what I like.”

Travis is so confused by what’s happening, because that answer just turns Claude’s smile into something softer, more pitying.

“You doing okay?”

“Uh, yeah? My shoulder hurts but other than that—”

“I don’t mean about your shoulder,” Claude waves his hand. 

“Then...what?”

“Nolan. Duh.” 

Travis feels his face go hot and he really hopes he’s not blushing. There’s a decent chance, he’s not much of a blusher, not like Nolan who goes red so often it’s basically useless as an indicator of, well...anything. 

“What about Patty?”

“TK, please.” Claude has propped his elbows up on the table, resting his chin on his hand. “You guys have been hanging out a lot. More than usual. I just wanted to check you’re okay with that.”

“Yeah, of course,” Travis says instantly. Faster than maybe he should have because Claude fixates on him. It’s the sort of stare that makes Travis think of a cat, wide and unblinking, pinning the prey into position. 

“Reeeeally,” Claude drawls. “Anything...going on? That you want to talk about?”

Now Travis has to be blushing because his face feels like it’s on fire.

“Um...I—uh—”

“You’re fucking,” Claude says and then when Travis stutters because he doesn’t want to confirm but he also doesn’t want to  _ deny _ he throws his hands up and crows in victory.

“Holy shit, you really are!”

Travis wants to die but weirdly enough he’s also kind of happy. 

“We’re dating,” he mumbles. He can say that now, they’ve confirmed that. A part of him has to stop himself from beaming. 

Claude comes around the table and wraps him into a hug.

“Awww, your crush worked out!”

“Get off me,” Travis slaps ineffectually at Claude’s everything but Claude keeps hold, catching Travis’s hands in his and pulling him close to smother him against his torso until Travis gives in and just slumps against him. 

“I hate you.”

“Shhh,” Claude says. “You love me. I’m your bisexual mentor.”

“Oh, my god,” Travis starts struggling again. Claude is barely taller than him and more on the wiry side. Travis can definitely take him. 

“Uh, what the fuck is going on?”

Nolan is standing in the doorway, hair messy and expression confused, cartons of ice cream double bagged in his hand. Apparently he’d just taken Travis’s keys and let himself back in. 

“Fuck yeah, hand it over,” Claude lets go of Travis and bounds over to grab the bags to dig through them. Travis scrubs a hand over his face and through his hair. He meets Nolan’s gaze over Claude’s head, raised eyebrows and all and shrugs helplessly. 

Claude has liberated his carton of ice cream and is in the process of opening the lid. 

“Travis was just telling me what a stud he bagged,” he says and slaps Nolan’s shoulder, cackling when he instantly flushed red.

“That’s it!” Travis screeches. “Get out of my house!”

It takes some shoving and physically putting his hand over Claude’s mouth to keep him from further embarrassing Travis, but he manages to get him out the door. Nolan is no help, standing there with his arms crossed, cheeks red, ice cream probably melting in the carton still in the bags in his hand. Finally Travis closes the door on Claude, then marches into the kitchen to grab two spoons. 

“Ice cream,” he says. “Come on.”

Slowly, Nolan unfolds himself and follows him into the living room. They settle on Travis stupidly large couch, ice cream in Nolan’s hand. Travis digs in.

“I didn’t— _ tell _ him,” Travis says finally, around the spoon in his mouth. He pulls it out and swallows. “He like. He knew about—like when I kissed you the first time he came to check on me—”

“That you have a crush on me.” Nolan can’t suppress a grin at that. It’s unbearably smug. Travis punches him in the thigh. 

“Shut the fuck up, you do too.”

“Have a crush on me? Yeah definitely, I’m such a—”

Travis would tackle him but he’s still holding the ice cream, that shit would get everywhere, so he leans in and kisses him instead. It’s still a marvel that he can do that and Nolan kisses back, soft and hungry. 

They don’t crush the ice cream and when they break apart Nolan shoves another spoonful in his mouth. 

“I don’t mind telling people,” he mumbles. “I just—just wanna know about it beforehand, right? So I’m ready.”

“Yeah.” Travis’s heart is beating really fast. “Yeah, of course, that makes sense.”

Nolan smiles at him, sweet. There’s a smudge of ice cream at the corner of his mouth and this time Travis takes the carton and puts it on the couch table before he kisses him. Bears him down on the couch, settles in, Nolan’s warm hand on his back, all the feelings in his chest, open, unrestrained, happy. 

The ice cream will melt, but whatever. He’ll clean it up later. 

**Author's Note:**

> There’s definitely a coda here, where Nolan still goes on his vacation with Nico and Travis is jealous about it and also Nico figures out Nolan had a crush on him at the draft. 
> 
> You can find me on tumblr if you want. Come say hi!


End file.
